Fonts are not embedded

What “embedded” means

A PDF can carry a font in two ways. It can include the font program itself — the outlines of every glyph the document uses — or it can simply name the font and trust whatever opens the file to have a copy. The first is an embedded font; the second is a reference.

On your own computer the two look identical, because your computer has the font installed. The printer's workflow does not have your fonts, and KDP's file guidelines require every font in an interior to be embedded so that what prints is what you designed. A file that only references a font is either rejected at upload or flagged during review.

Why it happens even when you did nothing wrong

Most word processors embed fonts by default when they export to PDF, which is why the problem surprises people. The usual causes are narrower:

• The base-14 fonts. Helvetica, Times, Courier, Symbol and ZapfDingbats are part of the PDF standard and many tools refer to them by name instead of embedding them, on the assumption that every reader has them. A printer is not a reader.
• Licensing flags. A font can declare that it may not be embedded. Well-behaved software respects that and writes a reference instead, usually without telling you.
• Fonts inside placed artwork. A chart or diagram pasted in as a PDF or EPS keeps whatever font handling it had when it was made, regardless of how the rest of the book is exported.
• “Smallest file size” export presets, which drop embedded fonts to save space.

How to check a file

In Adobe Acrobat or Reader, File → Properties → Fonts lists every font with “(Embedded)” or “(Embedded Subset)” beside it. A font without either is a reference. A subset is fine: it means only the characters the document uses were included.

The pre-flight checker in this app reads the same information from the PDF's font dictionaries and lists each font with its status, without uploading the file anywhere. Where a font's status cannot be determined from the file, it reports that as unknown rather than guessing that it passed.

Fixing it

Re-export with font embedding switched on. In Word, that is the “Embed fonts in the file” option together with a PDF/A or “Best for printing” export. In InDesign, the “High Quality Print” or a PDF/X preset embeds everything it is allowed to. In Affinity Publisher and similar tools, the PDF (for print) preset does the same.

If a particular font refuses to embed, replace it with one whose licence allows embedding — most commercial and open-source text fonts do. Converting text to outlines also works for a cover or a single display line, but it is the wrong fix for a whole interior: the file grows, and the text is no longer searchable.

Interiors produced by this app's interior generator always embed their fonts, so regenerating a journal or planner interior is the quickest route when that is where the file came from.